Weight Loss Journey Update

I wanted to do a separate post on my weight loss journey. It's probably going to be long so bear with me. It feels like forever since I started trying to lose weight but its really only been a year! Well I'm happy to report that I've finally had some success! I'll give a quick rundown of what's been going on, how I finally got the scale moving in the right direction, and share some of my successes!

So a year ago I joined Weight Watchers online and started with that program. I really liked WW and know that I could have had great success with it but I didn't. The problem wasn't WW, it was me. I just wasn't serious yet. I wasn't "ready" or whatever. I would eat well during the week and blow it all on the weekend. I would lose and gain the same lb or 2 each week. And end up hating myself for it! (Anyone else ever felt like that?!) It's SO frustrating!! So I ended up quitting WW because I couldn't justify the monthly expense if I wasn't really working the program.

Fast forward a few months and something changed, something "clicked". I think it was really a combination of a lot of things that finally got me motivated. I was sick of feeling like crud. I was sick of having to try on 15 different outfits to find one that hid my fat rolls when I sit down and didn't look horrible. I was sick of my jeans being tight all day, I was just fed up with it. I also got inspired! I read some weight loss blogs online and really started to relate to them. I probably have Mama Laughlin most to thank for this. That girl is so inspirational! Reading her blog, I could totally relate to her. She has kids, she has a job, she's busy but she found time and energy to do it. It was hard for her! But she kept doing it. And she got great results! Reading her blog, I felt like I could do it too!

I really think that's what happened. I stopped wishing it would happen, and just got off my big butt and did it! I worked out more. I meal planned and ate healthier everyday (ok most days). I stopped binging the whole weekend and allowed myself one cheat meal a weekend. I stopped snacking at night after dinner.  I payed attention to the calorie counts of food at home and restaurants. I made time workout everyday. I just did it! That's really the secret I found, you just have to do it! You have to do it everyday and it sucks! Of course I'd rather have a Big Mac for lunch than a salad. Yeah, I'd rather take a nap than do an hour of cardio at the gym. But you know what I found? Its worth it to make the healthier choice. And when you continue to make the healthier choices your clothes start to get looser, the scale starts to go down, people start to notice and its SO worth it!

I think once I decided to do it the other thing that I had differently this time was knowledge. I started reading health and fitness blogs and learned about what foods to eat, what workouts to do, etc. What worked for other people. Some of my favorite healthy blogs (besides ML) are: Peanut Butter Fingers, SkinnyMeg, Can You Stay for Dinner. There's a ton of people out there just like me who are doing the weight loss thing or have done it. To me that was incredibly motivating and I felt supported. Like I wasn't alone doing it.

That brings me to my 3rd point of what was different this time around: I got support. Whenever I've tried to lose weight in the past I always tried to do it on my own and I ended up quitting. It got hard (duh!) and I just gave up. This time thanks to the wonderful world of social media, I had support. I had a lot of support! Mama Laughlin has a Facebook group with like 6,000 followers. Girls just like me struggling everyday to make the right choices and they can talk about it, ask each other questions, whatever. That's been great. From that group I actually joined a weight loss competition where we were put on small teams. My little team has been great! Since the competition ended we have stayed in touch and check in with each other every day or so. That's been so nice!

In addition to that, on the STLWed message board I read (the mommy board) a group of girls got together to support each other. They do weekly check ins and just generally support each other. That's been great too! We also all got on My Fitness Pal which is an app where you can track your food and exercise. I have it on my phone and its so easy to use. It also has a social media aspect where you can "friend" people on there and they can see your food diary, what exercise you did, etc. That's been SO awesome.  Its like having friends to keep you accountable everyday. Someone to say "great job!" when you did an awesome workout! Its great! I recently got up to tracking 100 days in a row on MFP so that was a big success.

So really what happened was like a perfect storm. I found some online resources for motivation/education/ideas, etc. I got motivated and actually got my booty in gear, stopped my bad behaviors and started good ones. And I got support!

Whew! After all of that I guess you are wondering how I'm doing now, weight wise? Well its hard to say for sure because I am bad at keeping track. But I know for sure I've lost at least 15lbs and 2 pants sizes since I started really paying attention about 6 months ago. Yay! Here is a pic from October 2011. 6 months after giving birth.

Here is one from Feb 2012 when I started on WW. You can really tell in my face. Gross!

And now for some happy shots! Here is a side by side comparison: the pic on the left is from September 2011 at Steve's Sprinkler Fitter Graduation and the pic on the right is from a year later, October 2012. What a difference a year makes!!

Here's an even more recent one from this Christmas. I always seem to be holding a baby in my pics...ha ha! Anyways. I'm pretty proud of the success I've had. I think you can really see it in these pictures!

Wow this post is getting way to long! I think I will have to share what I've learned in a separate post! If you're still with me then thanks for hanging on. Stay tuned for part 2!

Weight Watchers Update - 1 Week till Goal Time

We haven't had a WW update in a while so I thought I'd check in. I've been on the program now for 2 months! Hard to believe its been that long. Its been a learning experience and a struggle for sure. But I've lost 8lbs so far! So yay! I have another week to my first short term goal of losing 10lbs in 2 months so I'm hoping that I can meet that goal Friday.

Changing my diet has been really hard for me. After all, its bad eating habits that got me here, right? I have been able to change my habits during the week and have been eating pretty well at work and in the evenings. I eat a good breakfast and a decent lunch (most days) and make some yummy WW things for dinner usually. I've tried a lot of great recipes on WW. Its great how they have so many recipes and resources for recipes. I haven't really had to adjust my cooking that much, just mostly including more veggies, less carbs and eating smaller portions. But I'm still able to cook all my favorite things, tacos, chili, lasagna, etc. Speak of which, here are some awesome recipes I've tried since my last post:

Mini Chocolate Chip Cookies

Tex Mex Chicken

Beef and Vegetable Casserole

Mini Italian Meatloves with Penne and Sauteed Zucchini

Cheesy ChiliMac

Cheesy Chicken Shells

When I first started I had a lot of momentum and was really committed. Since then, I've lost a little momentum and I've had some bad slacking off days for sure. It just seems like life gets in the way sometimes, eating wise and exercise wise. Also, I feel myself fighting (with myself) pretty often lately. I need to get in control! I've also been slacking on working out which I need to get better about.

But anyway, taking a note from my good friend, Jenn, lets focus on the positives!

So, 8 weeks in and:

• I'm down 8lbs, which averages out to 1lb/week, that's a decent weight loss
• I have been getting exercise most days, either taking a walk or going to the gym
• My clothes are definitely getting too big, a few pairs of pants had to be retired already because they are way too big
• Clothes one size smaller are actually starting to fit
• I've increased my fruit/veggie intake by a lot
• I'm learning to cook better and make better food choices

So that's a lot of things going well! Wish me luck. Lets hope I can get my rear in gear this week and lose 2lbs to meet my goal!

WW Update

So I guess its been a month since I started doing Weight Watchers, time for an update! So far so good I would say. I'm still getting used to it of course but I've gotten a lot of good habits/routines going since starting. On a normal day, I like to plan what I'm going to eat for that day in the morning and calculate the points to make sure I stay within my allotted number. That has been working great. I usually provide myself a few snacks and even dessert for dinner (usually a skinny cow ice cream or sugar free instant pudding). I always leave a little wiggle room too, just in case. That has been working great for me during the week. Along with this, I've been planning out the meals we will have for dinner that week from my favorite WW recipes so I can know to point out what dinner I'm having each night.

Planning dinners in advance has really been a great thing for me. That way I can make one trip to the grocery store and make sure we have every ingredient we need for the week as well as make sure to use all the fresh veggies and existing ingredients we have before they go bad. I used to kind of do this before but nothing formally, where I wrote it down and planned a grocery trip, etc. So that's been going great. I've also been loading up on veggies for cheap from our local Coop. I've loved that! Its awesome to get a variety of ingredients and try to see what you can make with them.

I've been trying a lot of new WW recipes. One that I made a few weeks ago is Beef Baked Ziti. It was really yummy! Steve and I really love pasta so this was a good recipe for us. I really enjoyed it and it didn't taste "diet" at all. We ate it for a few left over meals after that too. Another recipe I made recently that we both enjoyed were Turkey Stuffed Peppers. I'd never made stuffed peppers before and I wasn't sure Steve would even eat them, but he did. And the recipe was really yummy. I added a few extra veggies that we had laying around so that made it even better! I've found a few recipes I want to try this week so I'll let you know how they go!

I also tried a few other WW recipes and they were gross! ha ha! I guess all cooking adventures don't end well...Slow Cooker Lasagna was so gross. I've tried a few different recipes to try to get a good crock pot lasagna before being on WW and all the results were bad. Maybe this is just a dish you have to go the extra mile for and make the right way! I also tried to make Baked Pasta with Butternut Squash and Ricotta. Yuk! Steve has been on a butternut squash kick so I thought this recipe might be good. It was gross. It was just really bland and dry. And it took forever to make....boo. Not making that one again! ha

My downfall has consistently been the weekends. My normal schedule is off on the weekends and its a lot harder to plan out what I'm going to eat each day on the weekends. We usually have something going on with family that inevitably involves eating out or eating a meal at someone else's house. Also, I might have something else going on where I won't know what I'll be eating. For example, this weekend was a baby shower and I have no idea the points in the food at those kinds of gatherings. (I did avoid eating a delicious loking cupcake at the shower though, thankyouverymuch!) So I just try to make the best choices I can in the situation! If I know we are going out to eat I try to find out where we are going ahead of time to look up the points on this handy website. That website has points for a ton of restaurants, which is really helpful. If we are eating at someone's house I just try to make good choices like eat a salad/veggies with a vinaigrette dressing, pass the rolls with butter, pass on dessert, etc. Its really hard to make those good choices sometimes when everyone else is indulging, but I keep trying! The more I do it, the more I learn so that's always a good thing! And the longer I do it, the more of a habit eating good becomes!

But I'm down 5lbs after a month! Yay! So halfway to my 2 month goal. I think that's pretty good for me considering I've only been able to meet my working out goal of 3 times a week once this month. So...so far so good on WW. I hope I'm not annoying my friends and family too much talking about it! Here's to a new week and hopefully a lb or two lost at the end of it! :)

WW Week 1

First week on Weight Watchers done! So how did it go? The first few days were kind of hard adjusting from what I would normally eat to what I am eating now. I found myself really thinking about everything I put in my mouth which is a good thing. One day at work it was about a half hour before lunch and I thought about grabbing something but decided to wait to lunch to avoid the points for that granola bar or whatever I might have eaten normally. So that's a good thing! I also ate a TON more fruits and veggies this week since they are free. So that's a very good thing!

A couple of days I did find myself very hungry around the 4-5 o'clock hour, right before dinner. I need to get into the habit of having a healthy snack around that time to hold me over until dinner. This second week I've tried bringing an extra piece of fruit for that time, so we'll see how that works!

I tried some WW recipes this week too and that was fun. I made this Ziti recipe and it was pretty good. I ended up having to add marina sauce because it was too dry but other than that it was good and we had a ton of leftovers. The nice thing about using recipes from the WW website is you don't have to input them to track them. The bad thing is that I ended up adding things like the marinara which throws off the points. You can edit the recipe to make it a custom version, I just haven't done that yet.

I also found out that I can still have my subway for lunches! Yay! A 6 inch turkey sub on wheat with all the veggies you want is only 6 points. Woo hooo!! No mayo for me of course but its still yummy with mustard.

Unfortunately I didn't lose any weight this week. I was pretty bad on the weekend, going out to happy hour and a few drinks with some girlfriends and then I gave into Taco Bell on Saturday so....no weight loss, but its not a big surprise. I also didn't get a chance to go to the gym except one time. Its really hard to figure it out time to go with Steven and Steve's school schedule, but I need to work harder on that one.

So for this week, I'm going to try very hard to be better on the weekends and make it to the gym! Looking forward to making some new recipes too. I hope everyone has a great week!

Ok Lets Do This!

Well I'm starting a new journey today...its my first day on Weight Watchers. I wasn't really planning to put it out there to the world but since the only 2 people who read my blog consistently (love you mom and Jenn) already know about it, why not? Plus, maybe writing about this journey will help me think through it more. Also, maybe this will be another place where I can be accountable.

So why now? Well my struggle with weight goes waaaaay back. Probably to middle school. I've always had a bad body image. I remember thinking that I was so fat in high school and when I look back at the pictures now, I was pretty thin. Certainly nothing that I would consider fat. During college, my bad image along with some pretty horrible eating habits ended me in the yo-yo dieting/gaining weight cycle. I would get really heavy and then lose a bunch of weight only to get heavy again. Frustrating. And what a horrible time to be doing that, trying to meet people and dating. Ugh...moving on.

After college, I did lose a bunch of weight by working out and eating healthier. I was in a really good places where I was happy with myself and probably the thinnest I've ever been in my adult life. That's when I met Steve. We both had good habits of being active and fitness was important to us. However, we also both had a history of not so great food choices. That combined with our new relationship status I think let us slip a lot in our eating and maintenance of an exercise routine. So we both ended up gaining weight our first year together, but we were happy. I've noticed over my lifetime when I'm happy in a relationship its much harder to get motivated to work out and lose weight. For some reason I get complacent when I'm happy emotionally. I wonder if its the same for everyone?

During our relationship Steve and I have tried numerous diets to lose weight together. Its really been failure of commitment and motivation on our part, if I'm being totally honest. We did lose a lot of weight before our wedding but pretty much gained it all back on the honeymoon. Oops.

Fast forward to now, I'm 9 months past giving birth and still holding onto some extra weight from my pregnancy. I went back to my pre-pregnancy weight pretty quickly after having Steven but that still left something to be desired. When I found out I was pregnant, my OB had concerns about my weight. He wanted me to lose weight in the first trimester which I did (mostly by being so nauseous and barfing all the time, but anyway). So, while I know most people try to get back to their pre-pregnancy weight I really need to lose much more than that.

So why Weight Watchers? I feel like WW might be the way to go to help me get my bad eating habits under control. I have periods of time where I make really good, healthy choices in food and then there's times where I completely blow it. So I feel like it will be good for me to track what I'm eating and have some accountability using the WW points system. I also really like that they give you extra weekly points you can distribute however you want. That's a really nice bonus. So if I know I'm planning on going out to dinner Saturday I can try to behave the rest of the week and use my extra points that day. They also have a separate point system for nursing moms, which is really nice.

So what kind of goals am I setting for myself? I think overall I want to lose 40lbs. In order to even be in the healthy weight range for my height and age I would need to lose a significant amount of weight (its depressing to type that). But I don't want to just be in the very top of the healthy weight range, I'd like to land somewhere more towards the middle. So I think 40lbs would be a good long term goal. In the short term, I'd like to lose 10lbs. I think I can accomplish this in 2 months. I'm planning to do WW to track what I eat and I'd also like to set myself the goal of going to the gym 3 times a week to start. I feel like those are realistic goals and I feel optimistic that I can achieve them!

So, friends and family, wish me luck! I hope to discuss some of my WW journey with you on here so stay tuned....